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Monday, 29 September 2014

An MMO of the Future - Destiny: Review

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Review by Jack Sutton

So I’ve had Destiny for a while now, and it’s safe to say
that I’ve played the holy hell out of it, and despite some of its flaws, I had
a blast playing it. Destiny is a great game, but doesn’t live up to the wild
expectations that we had, but that’s only because those expectations were so
incredibly high. It might have been overhyped, but Destiny is certainly worth
picking up for any shooter/RPG fan.

You take control of a Guardian, a mysterious character that
has been tasked with pushing back “The Darkness”. Set in a future where
creatures known as “The Fallen” are making a return after a god-like entity
called “The Traveller” defeated them centuries ago, Destiny spans Earth, Venus,
Mars and the Moon. With a story as basic as “bad things are coming, kill them”,
and told in a way that is sometimes hard to make sense of, this title won’t be
winning any awards for groundbreaking storylines.

What I mean is that after a few missions done in a certain
order, the map begins to open up, starting on Earth, then to the Moon, and
later to Venus and finally Mars. When the map begins to open up, you are given
multiple missions at once, and can complete them in any order that you wish. A
basic idea of the recommended order can be seen by looking at the level of
difficulty that each mission has, but this is more of a guideline, and you can
take the game any way you wish.

As you tackle missions, you see cutscenes that push the
story further, and open up new missions and objectives to complete, but due to
the fact that there is no linear way through the game, it’s often easy to get
confused as to what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and who you’re doing it
for. This tends to lead to just killing big alien things because they’re ugly
and trying to kill you, as opposed to fighting for a reason.

Whilst this stops the player from being completely immersed,
it shouldn’t put anyone off playing. In a game like this players should be
interested in one thing – gameplay. At the end of the day, Destiny is an
MMORPG, so levelling and looting should – and are – included in a good way.
Combine this with addictive, responsive shooter controls and seamless
co-operative play, and it makes for a gaming experience that is fun, satisfying
and rewarding.

As a Guardian, you will have access to a large array of
weapons and abilities that you can use to decimate your enemies. From the brute
force of the Titan, to the more precise tactics of a Hunter, Destiny does well
to allow you to play your way. Stay at a distance and snipe two races of aliens
who are fighting eachother, or charge in guns blazing to take them head on, the
choice is yours. This isn’t fully explored though, and most firefights –
whether they start off stealthily or aggressively – end up the same way.

And here we have Destiny’s biggest shortcoming. It tries to
do too much, and suffers because of it. Rather than choose one thing to excel
at, and perfect it, Destiny spreads it’s wings and does as much as it possibly
can. It certainly accomplishes a lot, but in its attempts to tackle too much,
it never truly explores any specific element to its fullest potential.

For example, Destiny has a far bigger world and more variety
in it’s environments than a game like Borderlands, but its RPG elements aren’t
as refined. The shooting has more variety than a game like Call of Duty, but
the competitive multiplayer is far less rewarding. Destiny spreads itself too
thinly over too many elements, and so doesn’t manage to truly nail any one of
them.

At the end of the day, Destiny is a great start for what
could easily be a fantastic new IP. The story is blah, and riddled with
clichés, and it manages to do more than other games, but not as well. In spite
of all this though, I have been playing pretty much non-stop since I got it,
and I plan to play far more in the future. If you can pick this up at a
reasonable price (and for this title, anything under £40 is reasonable), you
should definitely try it out.